Told in the Hills: A Novel

by Marah Ellis Ryan

The defiant face did not relax, even at that intelligence. Her eyes were on the commander, her judge. And he was looking with decided interest at her.

"Yours is a very grave offense, Miss Rachel," he said, with deliberation that struck added terrors to Tillie's heart. "The penalty of contriving the escape of prisoners is one I do not like to mention to you; but since the man in this case was innocent, and I take your evidence in proof—well, that might be some extenuation of the act."

"I didn't know he was innocent when I helped him," she broke in; "I thought the horses were stolen after he left me."

"That makes it more serious, certainly;" but his eyes were not at all serious. "And since you seem determined to allow nothing in extenuation of your own actions, I can only say that—that I value very highly the forty men whose lives were saved to us by that escape; and when I see Mr. Genesee, I will thank him in the warmest way at my command;" and he held out his hand to the very erect, very defiant rebel.

She could scarcely believe it when she heard the words of praise about her; when one man after another of that rescued crowd came forward to shake hands with her—and Hardy almost lifted her off her feet to kiss her. "By George! I'm proud of you, Rachel," he said impulsively. "You are plucky enough to—to be Genesee himself."

The praise seemed a very little thing to her. Her bravado was over; she felt as if she must cry if they did not leave her alone. Of what use were words, if he should never come back—never know that he was cleared of suspicion? If they had so many kind words now, why had they not found some for him when he needed them? She did not know the uncompromising surliness that made him so difficult of approach to many people, especially any who showed their own feeling of superiority, as most of them did, to a squaw man.

She heard that term from the Major, a moment after he had shaken hands with her. He had asked what were the other suspicions mentioned against Genesee; she could not hear the answer—they had moved a little apart from her—but she could hear the impatience with which he broke in on their speech.

"A squaw man!—well, what if he is?" he asked, with a serene indifference to the social side of the question. "What difference does it make whether the man's wife has been red, or white, or black, so long as she suited him? There are two classes of squaw men, as there are of other men on the frontier—the renegades and the usual percentage of honest and dishonest citizens. You've all apparently been willing to understand only the renegades. I've been along the border for thirty years, and some of the bravest white men I've ever seen had Indian wives. Some of the men whose assistance in Indian wars has been invaluable to us are ranchmen whose children are half-breeds, and who have taught their squaws housework and English at the same time, and made them a credit to any nation. There's a heap of uncalled-for prejudice against a certain class of those men; and, so far as I've noticed, the sneak who abandons his wife and children back in the States, or borrows the wife of someone else to make the trip out here with, is the specimen that is first to curl his lip at the squaw man. That girl over there strikes me as showing more common sense than the whole community; she gave him the valuation of a man."

The Major's blood was up. It was seldom that he made so long a speech; but the question was one against which he had clashed often, and to find the old prejudice was so strong a factor in the disorganizing of an outpost was enraging.

"And do you realize what that man did when he took that trail north?" he demanded impressively. "He knew that he carried his life in his hand as surely as he carried that body. And he went up there to play it against big odds for the sake of a lot of people who had a contemptible contempt for him."